


Failings

by adjectivebear (HealerAriel)



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: (FIGHT ME), (and a better explanation of Katrina's sudden "lol I'm evil now" stuff), F/M, Guilt, Introspection, Pining, guilt about pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-16 22:54:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7287967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HealerAriel/pseuds/adjectivebear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little deleted scene right after the Season 2 finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Failings

“Look,” Abigail says quietly, breaking the heavy silence that has accompanied their drive back to the archives. “I know it’s not going to make you feel any better, but I don’t think it was really Katrina at the end. Nobody goes from zero to genocide that fast. I think Henry got to her, and he did his War thing on her, and she just… wasn’t _in_ there anymore.” 

“You are correct, Lieutenant,” Ichabod says, the words edged with a bitterness directed not at her, but at himself. “The idea that I sired a creature so black of heart that he could twist his mother’s love into a weapon with which to rape her mind gives me no comfort.” 

“Hey,” Abigail says firmly. “Don’t do that. You had _nothing_ to do with how Henry turned out.”

“Yes, that is rather the problem.” 

Abigail lets out an exasperated sigh. “Fine, yes, if you’d been there to raise him, Henry might have been a nice, normal guy and lived a nice, normal life. But you weren’t given that option.” She takes his hand, and he turns to meet her gaze. Her large, dark eyes glisten like precious gems in the glow of the streetlamps, and he quickly averts his own, ashamed. “This is _not_ on you.” 

Ichabod swallows. “If I had tried harder, fought longer to reach him--” 

“You tried your _ass_ off, Crane,” she interrupts. “You both did. He had _countless_ chances to change, and he didn’t. And as much as Katrina wanted to believe he had some good in him--” 

“It was precisely that belief that allowed him to claw his way into her mind,” Ichabod finishes grimly. How desperate Katrina had been to see the good in their son. How easy it must have been to turn that desperate hope against her. 

His stomach churns at the very thought. 

“I failed them.” 

Abigail makes some manner of objection, but Ichabod knows the truth of it. What is it, if not his failure as a father, that allowed his son to grow into a monster? What is it, if not his failure as a husband, that made him unable to protect his wife from the beast that was once Jeremy Crane? 

But how could he _not_ have failed her, he thinks ruefully, when he has made such a mockery of the sacred vows he took? When with each new dishonesty, each new secret brought to light he has felt his love for her trickling away like sand between his fingers, no matter how fiercely he tries to grasp it?

When he has, with increasing frequency, entertained the pernicious notion that the touch of destiny he felt upon meeting Katrina was not, as he had assumed at the time, because his soul had met its match, but because it had found the one who would one day deliver him to Abigail Mills? 

When even now his heart is breaking for his wife’s cruel fate, but not for his loss of her? 

God’s wounds, he is a vile creature. 

He covers Abigail’s hand with his own. So small and delicate, her hands. So graceful. He has often fancied them the hands of an elf or fairy rather than a mortal woman. Has too often felt the urge to entwine his fingers with hers, for no reason other than because he wishes to. 

“Lieutenant, I--” the words fail him. He clears his throat and tries again. “I must go, I think. Away from here.” 

There is a long, pregnant pause. Finally, Abigail sighs. “Yeah. I kind of get that.” 

She never asks him if he intends to return. Perhaps she does not wish to pry. Perhaps she does not wish to pressure him. 

Or perhaps she knows, as he does, that for her he always will.


End file.
